New writing, curated in Cape Town

Events

Event Information:

Two poems by Stephen Symons

An act of forgetfulness

Last night I left the TV on
and on reaching morning
it was playing music videos
that broke like small waves
over the green gossip
of sunbirds and white eyes

dream songs
still foamed by sleep

half-remembered tides

from a long-remembered love
that required an act of forgetfulness
to be heard once more.

Maritime

Another mad July gale—

A dark spinnaker
that unfurls sleep
and shakes souls
from the rigging of dreams

I surface
to catch a lone streetlight
tapping a final
love poem in Morse

While above
a slow moon
shivers
as it pisses light
between rent clouds
and against newborn
cheeks

But
what of
the birds
the squirrels
my eagle owls
the gardener's
fingerwork
and even us
curled against
this lashing of
black sail against
brick and bark?

Stephen Symons lives in Cape Town, where he works as a graphic designer. His writing has been published in journals, magazines and various anthologies throughout South Africa. His unpublished collection, Spioenkop was listed as a semi-finalist for the Hudson Prize for Poetry (US) in 2015. More recently, a selection of his poems have been selected for a special edition of Re-Markings, a refereed international bi-annual journal of English. He holds a masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town and is currently working on a PhD in African Studies. His poetry collection, Questions for the Sea (published by uHlanga Poetry Press), was launched in June 2016.